• Korea Trade Review
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• v.44 no.6
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• pp.345-361
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• 2019

In recent years, Chinese firms have explosively increased outward foreign direct investment (oFDI). While state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are still dominant in Chinese oFDI, privately-owned enterprises (POEs) are also accelerating their internationalization. These two types of Chinese firms differ in their behavior regarding oFDI. The objective of this paper is to analyze the differences in the choice of oFDI locations between Chinese SOEs and POEs by considering host country factors. By integrating the literature on Chinese firms' oFDI and on FDI locations, we developed six hypotheses concerning how host country factors affect their choice of location. We tested our hypotheses by conducting multiple regression analysis with recent secondary data on 413 Chinese MNEs in 88 countries between 2005 and 2016. The results of the test show that in selecting oFDI locations, Chinese SOEs invest relatively more in countries with richer natural resources, more abundant strategic assets, less production efficiency, higher political risk, and lower institutional quality compared with Chinese POEs. It is our hope that the empirical results of this paper will contribute to research on Chinese oFDI.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.47 no.6
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• pp.307-333
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• 2022

In recent years, the outward foreign direct investment (oFDI) in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) by Chinese companies has significantly increased in size and changed in content. However, changes in the oFDI patterns between the pre- and post-BRI periods have not received sufficient attention from academia despite their theoretical and strategic significance. This paper reviewed existing research to establish seven hypotheses on changes in the oFDI patterns of Chinese companies investing in BRI countries and conducted empirical analyses to test the hypotheses using secondary data. The results showed that after the BRI agreement, Chinese oFDI in BRI countries was more active in less economically and less institutionally developed countries, that the oFDI by privately-owned enterprises (POEs) increased more than that of state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and that SOEs were more active in the social overhead capital (SOC) area while POEs were more active in the non-SOC area. The paper concludes with a summary, implications, and future research directions.